Prosecutors are investigating members of Poland's ex-Communist Party on suspicion of inciting racial hatred through anti-Semitic comments that sparked an exodus of
Polish Jews in the late 1960s, a state institute said Saturday.

Based on extensive archive research, prosecutors from the Institute of National Remembrance, a state-run body that investigates crimes by the communist and fascist regimes, said they had ample documentation showing communist leaders' public calls for hatred against Polish citizens of Jewish ethnicity in 1968-1969 in the central city of Lodz.

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"In light of gathered documentation, there is no doubting the fact that at the beginning of 1967, central Communist Party authorities started calling for hatred ... directed against people of Jewish descent, and the operation then moved to the local level, setting in across the country," the institute stated.

The institute notes that first secretary of the Communist Party Wladyslaw Gomulka launched the anti-Semitic push in a speech on June 19, 1967, in which he pointed to the existence in Poland of an "imperial-Zionist fifth column."

Prosecutors say documents indicate the Lodz Communist Party leaders were the main instigators of the anti-Semitic drive in the industrial city and environs, which saw businessmen, academics, and journalists out of jobs after tagging them with Jewish roots or Zionist views.

According to the statement, more than 11,000 Jews applied for immigration papers during the anti-Semitic purge, a dramatic increase from the early 1960s.

No charges have been pressed and prosecutors said they are still working to identify those who were involved.

People convicted of public incitement of racial hatred face up to two years in prison.